


Helpful Escalation

by Distraktion



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alt-Power Taylor Hebert, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26303374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distraktion/pseuds/Distraktion
Summary: Taylor Hebert has become a parahuman specializing in Escalation, and makes quite a stir at Winslow High School on January 4, 2011. She helps people go up, and then sometimes go down.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	Helpful Escalation

AN: This is just a fun little story I wrote to take a break from heavier subjects in my main fic. Who needs drama, anxiety, or bullies when you can have ESCALATION!

The helpful kind, I mean.

**********************

**[Winslow High School, 4 January 2011, Morning]**

There were many things that could be said of Janice Blackwell, who was currently in her office...fast asleep at her desk as the world went to hell around her. 

As a person, she was fairly average, one of many Brockton Bay residents who (for some unknown reason) sported a bowl cut. She was thin, wore pantsuits, and despite many fad diets and creams always seemed to have sunken eyes. She didn’t smile much, and as a school principal was given very few reasons to...especially since she worked at Winslow. It was sort of like the armpit of the Brockton Bay school system, a term the news ‘accidentally’ used regularly.

Professionally, she was the Winslow High school Principal, and had been so for nearly a decade. Working there had given her a healthy respect for the method of “wait and see,” and a strong disrespect for students as a whole. The former meant that with enough time most problems would solve themselves, and the latter meant that it was usually the fault of her various problem students. It was a belief system that hadn’t failed her yet.

Since she was given several reasons (usually money related) to use a gentle touch on at least half of those problem students, it meant she could focus all her efforts on just a select few. Well, really just one or two, honestly, since the other problem children used her as a punching bag. 

Taylor Hebert, for instance, was constantly making up stories about kids bullying and tormenting her, but they were never backed up with evidence or witnesses. The girl obviously had a creative mind, but had chosen to spend it slacking off instead of trying to make friends or getting her grades up. Given that her _supposed_ tormentors were a popular girl with a lawyer father and a track star with a...special talent, Janice generally gave both a pass.

She could have done something to help Hebert, but that would have reduced her budget, made paperwork, and frankly Janice had more important things to do than change the system. This was the same system that was allowing her to nap at her desk, ignoring the knocking at the door and knowing they would eventually go aw-

_BAM_

The door flew open, and Janice snapped awake. She had positioned her computer monitor in such a way as to block her visitor’s view of her, and thus had several seconds to make herself presentable. By the time Head Janitor Dustin had dodged around the boxes and sizable desk in her cramped office, she had already blinked several times, wiped her face, and glared.

“Blackwell, we’ve got a problem!” The swarthy man ignored her best glare as though she were barely waving at him, gesturing wildly as he tried to catch his breath. His hands were covered in some kind of greasy gunk, he smelled terrible, and his uniform was far dirtier than usual. “One of the students has been...over the break I guess...locker...the smell...”

“What the hell is that smell?” Blackwell got to the heart of the matter immediately, knowing that cleaning her threadbare carpet was hard enough without Janitor Goo in it. He ignored her comment though, and she finally clapped her hands. “Enough! Take me to it, whatever it is.”

As they walked off, Janice couldn’t help but think that this was probably Taylor Hebert’s fault.

Later that day, she’d be fired, and would feel completely justified in this assumption.

***

**[PRT, 3 Hours later]**

“-so you can understand why we’re concerned, of course, can’t you Mr. Hebert?” The PRT Lawyer, Douglas he’d called himself, gave his best PR smile at the father, doing his best to ignore the man’s baleful glare. “We just want what’s best for both of you.”

“You’re going to hold them accountable for this. That’s what’s best.” Daniel Hebert, Danny to his friends, was many things. He was tall and thin, had dark hair that was receding, and thick glasses. He also had a daughter, and had been pulled away from his job at the Dockworker’s Association because the school claimed there had been an...incident. “No matter how you keep trying to frame it, my daughter’s the one that should be getting praise, assistance, and fancy lawyers...not this bullshit victim-blaming thing you’re trying to pull here.”

“Mr. Hebert, I would like to assure you that we have nothing but the best intentions for all parties involved.” The smile came out again, then dimmed as he saw that Danny wasn’t buying it. So Douglas turned to his backup plan...photographic evidence. “Unfortunately, we have the word of several other students that she was at fault for several things that could be considered crimes.”

He spread the pictures out on the table, but Danny wasn’t looking at them. He’d already seen them earlier, when he’d come to the school to find Taylor and been told that the PRT had taken her away. They gave him an address, offered him a ride, and then that skeletal Principal had the _gall_ to talk to him about paying a bill for _damages_.

He had stood there, staring at the mess left in Taylor’s wake. Students milled around him holding their noses and laughing, as though this hadn’t been the result of the bullying, torment, and mistreatment of his little girl. A school administrator was whispering about how she’d never thought it was this bad, that she’d always assumed Taylor was just telling stories. 

But all Danny could think was that this was his fault. That he had _failed_ her.

In that moment, he swore that he would never leave Taylor’s side again. Whether with his body, his words, or the promise of his conviction, he’d never let her be alone again. 

As she sat beside him now, in her own world and wearing fresh clothes provided by the PRT, he smiled.

Because at the same time, he was so damn proud of her.

***

**[A Rising Hero]**

“Ms Hebert?” Armsmaster snapped his fingers, or rather, he activated a sound file via his helmet’s vision-assisted visor HUD that sounded like fingers snapping. It may have been louder than necessary, since everyone in the room winced. Except Taylor. “Taylor, could you look at me?”

Reaching out slowly, so as not to startle anyone after having stood motionless for several minutes while the lawyer prattled on, he gestured from Danny to Taylor. The heavily armored Tinker was sick of watching Douglas try to convince the girl’s father to sign away his right to sue. He hadn’t seen any signs of lies in the man’s statements, and felt like his time was being wasted.

Plus, he was very interested in just what the girl had been drawing for the last ten minutes.

“Taylor?” Danny gently placed a hand on his daughter’s head, and they all noticed as her quick pencil movements slowed, then stopped entirely. She blinked rapidly, then shook her head and looked around before focusing on her father. “You’re being a bit rude, and I think Armsmaster would like to speak with you.”

“Oh. Oh! I’m so sorry! I just had a really good idea for a belt improvement that doesn’t use actual belts and I thought-” The girl babbled for a few moments before her father burst into laughter and patted her on the head again. She blushed, as if realizing that one of her childhood heroes was still staring at her, and gave him a little wave. “Um...hi, Armsmaster. Thanks for being here?”

“The pleasure is all mine, Taylor.” The man waved back, a jerky motion that showed he wasn’t one who engaged in such frivolities as human expression often. He gestured at the paper and she handed it over nervously. He began to look it over, noting that despite how crude it was, the work actually had fine details once you got past the fantastical art. Knowing that he had her full attention, he asked a question. “So, can you tell us a little more about what brought all this on?”

“You mean my trigger?” Taylor asked, and for a moment the veteran hero thought he had broken one of the cardinal rules of parahumans...asking about someone’s trigger event. But the girl just laughed, shrugging, and nodded. “Yeah, it’s actually kind of embarrassing, but since I’m already here I guess I can give you the basics.”

She told them a tale of how, just a day before Winslow’s Winter Break started, she had been thinking that the girls who’d been bullying her for over a year (Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements) had lost interest. Taylor had started to be more bold, no longer avoiding the three and even walking near them without fear of having her belongings ruined or body attacked.

“That was my downfall, quite literally.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes as she said it.

“I was heading down to lunch, taking the stairs in a small group of kids, and I saw that Sophia was walking beside me. She asked me how Fall was treating me, and as I started to explain I suddenly noticed that she had stopped.” Taylor started to flex her right hand, rubbing her thumb over her fingertips as if there was something on them. “I turned around to look at her, just in time to see her push me. She told me to have a nice trip, but...it was a push. Sophia’s not smart.”

Armsmaster had heard the joke before, years back when Assault tried it on him, and remembered enjoying the opportunity to slam the man into a wall after his trip failed. Still, hearing that one of his own Wards had done it to a teenager rankled him, and he nodded at her to go on.

“So, I was falling, and reached out for the banister, but this is Winslow so it was all splintered and nasty. They never clean it, and just paint over the thing when someone damages it.” Taylor held up her hand, showing them the faint scars on her fingertips. Danny reached over and put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close for a moment as she sniffled. “I thought I was going to die, and the ground below was getting closer and closer…”

Taylor said that she had passed out for a moment, and then suddenly she was slamming into one of her more recent bullies, Julia North. How both had been bruised and knocked to the ground, but were otherwise unharmed. How she had babbled to the larger girl about how scared she was and thanked her for being there to save her.

...how her savior, Julia had grabbed Taylor by the arm and the hair, dragged her into the girl’s bathroom, and pushed her face-first into a toilet.

“But the whole time I was gasping for air and Julia was kicking me, all I could think about was how much Winslow really needed better stairs, a banister that was in good shape, and really just better safety overall.” Taylor’s voice had gotten bright again, her words sped up, and she was gesturing at the notepad. Armsmaster began to flip through it, seeing dozens of drawings including a very familiar one that now sat in Winslow. “The school was never going to do it.”

Taylor shrugged, gesturing at photographs spread out on the table.

“So I decided to fix it myself.”

***

**[Going Up]**

“So she’s an _Escalator_ Tinker?” Renick was aghast, looking at the designs and not seeing a single combat-capable option among them. No guns, no bombs, no strange flesh-melting devices that defied physics. “How the hell are we going to make that into a Ward?”

“We’re still working out the details. If nothing else, we might be able to contract Hebert out to make some improvements around the PRT, assuming the city doesn’t snap her up first.” Piggot shrugged, taking a careful sip from her glass. 

“So if they go in the other direction, is it De-escalation?” Renick grinned as Piggot choked.

“I only get to drink once a month, Renick, and if you make me shoot it out my nose then I’ll shoot _you_.” Despite the PRT Director’s words, she still had an uncharacteristic grin on her face. She gestured at the papers in his hands. “Look at the back, the names she thought of, heh.”

“Seeberger, Scala, Elevation...wait, _Queen of Escalation_? Seriously?”

Director Piggot wasn’t usually one for laughter, but the rare instances where she did were always the greatest when with friends or comrades. The dour woman had lost several comrades back in the day, as well as her kidneys and several other internal parts, but one of the few she had now sat with her in her office as they shared a drink and looked over Taylor’s file.

“Hers is a very lucrative talent, especially with the state of disrepair that Brockton Bay has fallen into the past few years.” Renick nodded at a few of the simpler designs Taylor had created, now with notes from Armsmaster in red. He sighed, shaking his head. “A shame that we had to lose Shadow Stalker because of this mess.”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later, and I’m just glad it was sooner. It was also one of the requirements Hebert had to avoid a lawsuit. Hess is out, and she almost immediately turned on Barnes, Clements, and North. Like rats in a sinking ship, they tore each other to shreds.” Piggot frowned, a much more familiar expression for her, then returned to a smile as she added, “Of course, she also helped us root out a corrupt PRT caseworker and an apathetic school principal, so…even if she didn’t mean to, she did finally do something heroic.”

“Come to think of it, I have a note here from Winslow’s new Principal, asking if they could pay Taylor to upgrade her first design.” Certainly, Armsmaster had noted the use of interesting power sources in some of her designs, but the one currently in Winslow was far cruder. “She certainly made a mark with her ‘debut’ though, I have to admit.”

Though the charges were being dropped by Winslow, there had been some worry at first over the fact that Taylor was so driven that she had broken into the school over the Winter Break to ‘fix’ the stairs. The night watchman, criminally underpaid by Blackwell, had taken the break off.

It had required the girl to take nearly a hundred lockers, including her own, as well as countless objects from the school’s computer lab, chem lab, and janitor’s closet, but Winslow High School was now the only school in the state with an escalator. It was loud, smelly, and produced a gunky residue that Taylor promised she could fix in Version 2, but it worked.

The part the girl had been most proud of was the banister, though. She’d built a motion sensor into it, and if someone accelerated to quickly downwards an actual rubber belt (one of many she’d stolen from shop class) would whip out and grab them. Certainly, it was crude and caused minor burns, but she had made sure nobody would ever be afraid like she’d been.

“She also claims to be able to make Elevators, but we’re going to need more tests before we let anyone get in a metal box she makes.” Piggot laughed again, shaking her head at some of the designs the teen had given them. “Not a teleporter either. Just a box that lifts people.”

“Well, I think that Taylor Hebert, along with her father, have a bright future indeed.” Renick smiled, holding up his nearly empty glass. Piggot mimicked him, and both clinked their glasses together. “To her continued happiness as the world’s first Escalator Tinker.”

On that day, the Queen of Escalation was born, and her career only went up from there.

...she actually used a different cape name, though.

Not that PHO would ever believe it. 

The memes were just too good.

**************END

AN: I’ve been trying to write more upbeat stuff, and when I saw someone suggest an “escalation fic starring the Tinker who makes elevators” I just couldn’t NOT make this happen. It wrote itself. Maybe there will be more someday? Who knows?


End file.
